Fantasy Football draft season is upon us! It’s officially time to debate some fantasy football ADP. Which player should you draft this season? Marvin Harrison Jr. or Drake London?
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Marvin Harrison Jr – Jason Allwine
Marvin Harrison Jr. is one of the best WR prospects we have ever seen. And luckily for fantasy gamers, his ADP doesn’t match his potential. This is likely due to the fact that Harrison Jr. skipped most of the Pre-Draft proces. As a result, he has gone from generational talent with WR1 overall upside to a guy that some are arguing is not even the best WR in the class anymore. Rest assured, Harrison Jr. is the best rookie WR. Additionally, his landing spot should make all of us salivate. He is an easy selection at his current fantasy football adp and has a higher ceiling than the WR going next to him – Drake London.
The thing that makes this decision easier is simply target competition. Harrison Jr. is already clearly locked in as the Alpha WR1. He only has Trey McBride to worry about in terms of true target competition. And even then, it took a Zach Ertz injury for McBride to truly break out. Drake London on the other hand finds himself on team with Kyle Pitts and Bijan Robinson.
Pitts in particular should strike fear in the hearts of London managers as he is taller, faster, stronger, heavier, a better route runner, possesses higher draft capital, and actually has a 1,000-yard season under his belt. Pitts is also getting the roommate narrative as he’s staying with Penix and Cousins during training camp. Lastly, beat reports are heavily hyping up the Kyle Pitts breakout narrative. On the other hand, news from London is relatively quiet. Harrison Jr. on the other hand has been shown time and time again as a focal point of Cardinals camp.
Kyler Murray
All signs are pointing to Kyler Murray finally being 100-percent and ready to return to form in 2024. If that’s the case, we should expect around 550 pass attempts and 4,000 passing yards. Both numbers would be near Murray’s career best in 2020. Projecting Harrison Jr for a modest 30-percent target share would put him at around 165 targets and 1,200 receiving yards. For comparison, record-breaking rookie season target totals are as follows: Justin Jefferson (125), Ja’Marr Chase (128), Puka Nacua (159). We are staring down the barrel of a record-breaking season from Marvin Harrison Jr.
Harrison Jr. is one of the highest drafted WRs of all time. Harrison Jr. has back-to-back 1,200-yard, 14 TD seasons- finishing with a 94th percentile College Target Share and 95th percentile College Dominator Rating. He is one of the best route runners we’ve ever seen and is genuinely the total package at the WR position. He runs a 4.40 40 yard dash. Harrison Jr. is 6-3, 200-pounds. Finally, his best comparable is A.J. Green! Why are we questioning picking such an upside talent with so much target potential over a guy that hasn’t even had 1,000 yards after two years in the league? In fact, Harrison Jr. should be drafted even higher than his current fantasy football ADP would suggest!
Drake London – Dan Williamson
How many times will we fall for Shiny New Toy Syndrome? I get it. Harrison Jr. is probably going to have a spectacular career. However, he’s still a rookie. Not every rookie WR has an immediate runway to a WR1 season. As a matter of fact, that’s rather rare even for top 10 picks in the NFL Draft. We don’t have to go back far to find WRs taken in the top-10 who had merely very good, but not great seasons. Over the past three seasons there have been five wide receivers drafted in the top 10. Here are their finishes in their rookie seasons: WR 5, WR 12, WR 29, WR 21, WR 29. Harrison Jr. is currently being drafted as the WR9. Needless to say, this price leaves little, if any, room for profit.
Harrison Jr. is also joining a team that’s got a defensive-minded head coach and a QB who is prone to pulling the ball down and running. Kyler Murray has exactly ZERO seasons of 4000+ yards passing under his belt. Kirk Cousins went over 4,000 yards passing in seven out of eight years between 2015 and 2022 (and he was pacing to do so again in 2023). That’s great news for London. This is not so good for Harrison Jr. Both London and Harrison Jr. will be competing for targets with a TE considered elite, or at least likely elite, by fantasy gamers. If the wisdom of the crowds means anything, expectations for Trey McBride are higher than they are for Kyle Pitts, given their respective fantasy football ADP.
Will History Repeat Itself?
We can’t really hold Drake London‘s past against him though. He was stuck in an offense where the objective seemed to be to get the ball to marginally talented players as often as possible at the expense of targets and touches to the three players all drafted with top 10 picks. Now that Arthur Smith has taken his “talents” to Pittsburgh, there’s a new and much more exciting offense in Atlanta. Zac Robinson comes from the Sean McVay coaching tree, and we saw Kirk Cousins excel in that same offense in Minnesota. Playing the role of Justin Jefferson will be Drake London, while Kyle Pitts is in the T.J. Hockenson role, and Darnell Mooney is going to do his best Jordan Addison impersonation.
While it would be crazy to suggest Drake London is going to duplicate Jefferson’s counting stats, duplicating Jefferson’s target share of 29-30-percent is definitely possible, if not likely. I expect a similar target share for Harrison Jr. However, the size of the pie those targets are drawn from is likely to be smaller for Harrison. Both players are in prime positions to succeed, but Drake London has already had two seasons to acclimate to the NFL while Harrison Jr. is going to spend this season learning how to navigate that jump. I’m placing my bet with the receiver drafted in the top 10 of the NFL draft who has more experience and plays in a better offense: Drake London.
For more from PlayerProfiler, check out this article – Fantasy Sleepers – Targets in Dynasty Fantasy Football for 2024 (playerprofiler.com)
